Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I hear from a lot of wives who have a noticeable focus on the “other woman” in the affair.   We know that this isn’t always healthy, but we can’t seem to help it.  It’s common sense to know that we shouldn’t spend a lot of time thinking about or, worse, communicating with her. But this is sometimes much easier said than done. Some wives hate her but can’t stay away. Others are very curious about and want to understand her. Some even forge a sort of relationship with her, but then are hurt and confused when this doesn’t go well in the end.

A wife might say: “I admit that my trying to reach out to the other woman was really my attempt to keep her away from my husband. I wanted to know what made her think it was OK to cheat with married man. I wanted to know how the relationship started. I wanted to know what my husband told her about me. She was actually apologetic from the start and she told me that she would not keep the relationship going and would get out of our lives. A couple of weeks after that, I found a text that she had sent my husband and I confronted her. She told me that my husband had become an important support system for her emotionally and that it was hard to let that go. I told her that I was asking her to let that go anyway because we need her out of our lives to start over. I told her she can not imagine how much all of this hurts me.  I told her to put herself in my shoes. Her response to me was that she ‘couldn’t fully understand’ my pain because at this point, I’m making a choice to stay with a man who cheated on me.  She said because I am am making informed choice, my pain is partially my fault. She says that we are all adults here and I should be mad at my husband, not at her. I’m very disappointed that she can not see my side of this. How can she not see and understand my pain?”

I think that if you understand one basic truth, the rest might make sense. It is sometimes human nature to focus on yourself before others. Not every one is going to give you what you want if it means that, in order to do so, they have to deny themselves from having what they want.

She may very well feel sympathy for you, but at the end of the day, her desire to continue the relationship may be greater than any sympathy which she might feel. I know that this doesn’t seem fair, but I think it may be a mistake to put your future in her hands. She has her own agenda. And if she was all that caring and sympathetic, she may have thought twice about cheating in the first place.

I think that better strategy would be to turn your attention away from her and place it on your marriage. Your husband is the most logical person to approach about ending the affair. And if he is serious about ending it and he makes that intention clear to her, then it will end. The other woman can’t force him to be in a relationship that he does not willingly want to be in. She can keep trying to communicate, but he can ignore her or change his number.

Also, it doesn’t make sense to invest time, effort, and energy in a relationship that should not continue and doesn’t matter. Do you really want to keep this woman in your life? Why not take that energy and time and invest it in your marriage, which is a relationship that you want to pursue for the long term?

Frankly, reaching out to her and trying to appeal to her conscience gives her a bit of power over you. It makes you feel helpless because you have to worry about whether or not she’s going to do the right thing. I would want to take that power back.

I would worry more about expressing my pain to someone who actually cares about you (like your legitimate friends and family) or to someone who is qualified to hear it (a therapist.) This is only my opinion. I’m not a mental health expert. But it’s been my experience that the faster you leave the other woman behind in your thoughts and in your actions, the faster you can start to move on.

Worrying about whether she understands or sympathizes is pointless. She’s already shown that the person she cares the most about is herself. Continuing to have any sort of communication and relationship with her (regardless of the reason) just keeps this all going. It keeps her in your life. That is the last thing you should want.

I do understand your thought process, but I have never seen this work out well. The other woman will often have the mentality to be defensive first and to carry out her own agenda second. Even if you can make her feel guilt or sympathy, you can’t control what she thinks or does.

But you can control what you do and how you proceed. And the best way to proceed is to focus on those people who really matter.

I had some curiosity about the other woman in the beginning, but the idea of her having any power over me drove me crazy.  So I turned my attention elsewhere.  I had to redirect myself at first, but after a short time, it became a lot easier because I had many other things to address.  You can read more about that process on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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